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When President Bush signed the 2008 Omnibus spending bill last December, he effectively released the federal loan guarantee funding that nuclear developers say is critical to building the country’s first nuclear steam generators in decades—and reinvigorating the industry as a whole.

As such, the bill represents a major milestone for two developers in particular—Princeton, N.J.-based independent power producer NRG Energy; and Baltimore, Md.-based UniStar Energy—which were the first to submit combined construction and operating license applications (COLAs) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2007.

Each is in the process of spending tens of millions of development dollars on everything from regulatory applications and engineering to reactor vessels and other long lead-time components.

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